Interesting Links for 23-06-2017

[andrewducker]

That Dire Helium Shortage? Vastly Inflated

(tags: chemistry materials )

Trial! By! Cake!

(tags: history cake funny viaSwampers )

The Pinkest Pink Versus the Blackest Black

(tags: colour art Technology )

Scotland may close its first train station for 31 years

(tags: rail scotland transport )

Workplace gender quotas weed out incompetent men and make businesses more efficient

(tags: gender equality business politics )

Scots ban on puppy tail docking relaxed after Holyrood vote

(tags: dogs scotland )

Helpful criticism from a true fan...

(tags: fandom funny true comic )

Where do you fit in? (Enter your income, discover how many people earn less than you)

(tags: income )

Gender Variance Around the World Over Time

(tags: lgbt history )

House cat challenges a lion

(tags: lions cats video )

Virtual reality controllers take another step forward

(tags: VirtualReality ux )

Brexit: Leave voter realises his fruit farms could collapse without EU migrant workers

(tags: europe UK jobs farming OhForFucksSake )

Ron Howard taking over as director of Star Wars Han Solo film

(tags: StarWars movies )

System detects, translates sarcasm on social media

I bet it works *fantastically*
(tags: meaning language )

If you build it, they will ride: pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

Oh to have a bike lane to work
(tags: bicycles transport )

Finnish citizens given universal basic income report lower stress levels and greater incentive to work

(tags: GuaranteedIncome finland GoodNews )

Teenage boys wear skirts to school to protest against 'no shorts' policy

(tags: clothing heat gender )

New Hampshire Accidentally Approved A Bill Allowing Pregnant Women To Commit Murder

(tags: law women pregnancy usa murder )

Taylor Swift makes $200,000 per week since returning to Spotify

(tags: money spotify streaming music )

UN vote backing Chagos Islands a blow for UK

(tags: uk law unitednations )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Thanks for the gender variance link.

It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know for obvious reasons but knowledge is power for others! :o)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, nothing terribly new for me either. But handy to have as reference.

[rmc28]

We had a similar thing locally back in 2011 with a boy wearing his sister's skirt to protest a no-shorts policy: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8504552/Boy-wears-skirt-to-school-in-protest-against-discrimination.html

The school concerned still allows "tailored shorts during the summer term".

[mair-aw.livejournal.com]

We get something like this every year, don't we? I was wondering where all those boys got the skirts from, but maybe they have sisters or something.

[simont]

You'd certainly get extra points for sewing your own, if you couldn't easily lay your hands on an existing one.

Workplace gender quotas weed out incompetent men and make businesses more efficient

[doug]

This sounds great from the headline, but I have my worries about what they actually show. How did they determine mediocre men in terms of competency? "Those with higher incomes were deemed more competent." Umm, I think what you are actually showing is the displacement of less economically advantaged men, which is a different matter.

Re: Workplace gender quotas weed out incompetent men and make businesses more efficient

[fub]

Indeed. I work with people with a wide spread of salaries, and I am hesitant to call those who earn more than their peers more competent.

Helium

[nojay]

Helium is not that rare even outside geological gas reservoirs. It's more common than krypton and xenon in the atmosphere.

Cheap helium may go away in the next fifty or a hundred years due to exhaustion of those underground reservoirs but it will still be available at a price.

Re: Helium

[danieldwilliam]

Presumably at a worst case you just throw energy at the problem and freeze air or some other way of extracting it from the atmosphere.

[jack]

Dire Helium? Is there a marketing campaign to find a more badass name for He3? :)

[danieldwilliam]

Hellium.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm conflicted about yon fruit farmer.

There's a large part of me that wants to yell "You *won* ha ha ha, get over it, winner!"

However, there will be many fruit farmers who didn't vote for Brexit who will find labour restrictions just as difficult on their business and the food price inflation won't be fun for anyone. That said, low paid jobs are a curse of the British economy and being forced to raise wages or invest in productivity improvements may not turn out to be a bad thing.

But really, sovereignty?

[andrewducker]

It will, of course, push up food prices. With the usual knock-on effects on the poorest.

[danieldwilliam]

Mulling this over, over the weekend, the recent depreciation of Sterling will have driven increase in food prices and we may not get a second wave due to labour rates. Import are now more expensive. Domestic production can charge a higher price as it can gain more GBP revenue exporting. I am not sure about this. Who knows? Not me.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I have no idea either. We're certainly going to get a major reconfiguration of the economy, but goodness knows what it will look like afterwards.

[calimac]

Why'd it take so long for the Chagos Islands issue to reach some kind of crisis? I've been hearing about the problem for decades, off and on.

What puzzles me is where the Mauritian envoy says his country would be pleased to renew the lease, if they took control. I thought the idea was to let the islanders go back home.

[zotz]

Probably the lease on Diego Garcia. The archipelago as a whole isn't let out, just depopulated.

[jack]

"System detects, translates sarcasm on social media"

It seems like they started with tweets which included "#sarcasm". Even assuming they strip that out before analysing it, it may still be a biased sample. But spotting *any* sort of sarcasm is probably a good start.